Vizio to pay $2.2 million for spying on what customers watch without consent

Whether or not Vizio is “sorry” for spying on more than 11 million people while they watch TV in the privacy of their homes is debatable – the company was proud of its ability to capture “highly specific viewing behavior data on a massive scale with great accuracy” in its Oct. 2015 IPO – but Vizio has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle charges by the FTC. The data collection about what people were watching was occurring without users’ consent and Vizio was then sharing the data with advertisers and other companies.

In the FTC’s words, “The data generated when you watch television can reveal a lot about you and your household. So, before a company pulls up a chair next to you and starts taking careful notes on everything you watch (and then shares it with its partners), it should ask if that’s O.K. with you. VIZIO wasn’t doing that, and the FTC stepped in.”